Читать книгу The Complete Works of Algernon Blackwood. Novels, Short Stories, Horror Classics, Occult & Supernatural Tales, Plays онлайн

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'What in the world are they trying to do?' he asked, after watching their antics for some minutes with amazement.

'Looking for the broken parts,' explained Jonah, who was half amused, half alarmed. 'They get out of shape like that because they pick up the first pieces they find.'

'And you broke all these things?' The boy nodded his head proudly. 'I recker-nise most of them,' he said, 'but they're nearly all accidents. I said "sorry "for each one.'

'That, you see,' Nixie interrupted, 'makes all the difference. If you break a thing on purpose in a temper, you murder it; but the accidents come down here and feel nothing. They hardly know who broke them. In the end they all find their pieces. It's the heaven of broken things, we call it. But now let's send them away.'

'How?' asked Paul.

'By forgetting them,' cried Jonah.

They turned their faces away and began to think of other things, and at once the figures began to fade and grow dim. The lights went out one by one. The grotesque shapes melted into the trees, and a minute later there was nothing to be seen but the slender larch stems and the play of sunlight and shadow beneath their branches. 'You see how it works, at any rate,' Nixie said. 'Anything you've lost or broken will come back if you think hard enough—nice things as well as nasty things—but they must be real, real things, and you must want them in a real, real way.'